Prologue
When I was young, I remember my mother holding me in her arms and reading books to me.
“Elena, my lovely daughter.”
Her voice was gentle and warm. Like the soft air of spring replacing the winter winds, her calm, even tone would brush past my ears as she always read me fairy tales.
“You are the most precious and special child in the world.”
Kissing my forehead, she would tell me that I was as special as the child in the stories she read. The girl in the fairy tales was beautiful and bold. A girl loved even by witches people feared, and monsters whose names alone made others tremble. The heroine of those stories overcame hardships with the love she received and always ended up marrying a prince. Every time I turned the final page, I would say:
“I want to marry a prince too!”
Whenever I said that, my mother would always scribble something in the book and murmur, “So this is what inspires her… shall I keep this in mind?” Then she would smile faintly.
“I’ll make it happen for you.”
Make it happen? For what, Mother? Normally, when a daughter says something like that, a parent would find it cute and laugh it off—not say they’ll actually make it come true. Thinking about it, my mother had never been an ordinary person.
Still, at the time, I didn’t understand what she meant. I simply thought, ‘Mother loves me…’ Moreover, she was an incredibly intelligent person. She knew many things others did not.
Those who knew my mother called her this:
“A weirdo.”
To me, she was very kind, gentle, and warm. But whenever I met people who knew her outside, they would all say the same thing in unison. Something about how, before I was born, my mother had been a fearsome villainess who could make people’s tongues wag. She had been born into a fairly prestigious family, yet her personality was so vicious that she didn’t hesitate to strike others. However, one day she supposedly changed as if she were a different person, and people called it the Miracle of Gloudi. Even so, she had done so much in the past that even now, when her name is mentioned, some people still react with, “Ah… you’re the child of that weirdo…”
After that, I heard she left her family and started her own business. Everyone said she would fail quickly, but the result was the opposite. My mother created things no one else could have imagined. She achieved success across transportation, construction, and daily life. People called her a genius. There was nothing she didn’t know. Anything I was curious about, she would answer. No matter what it was, she always explained it to me.
“Our daughter will grow up to be a very, very beautiful young lady and marry a prince.”
Even the future itself. When I heard those words as a child, I had no doubt that I would grow up to become an empress. Like the girl in the fairy tales my mother read to me, I imagined meeting a handsome prince in a magnificent imperial palace, wearing a beautiful dress. That was when I was five years old.
But as I grew older, even my young eyes began to realize that my mother’s words were unrealistic. Feeling uneasy, I once asked her if I could truly marry a prince. Her answer was always, “Of course!”
When I asked how she could possibly know the future, my mother smiled and said:
“Because that’s the place where my dream unfolds. That’s why, Elena, my daughter, you are special and precious. You are the only one who exists outside that framework. Ah, that includes your father as well.”
Unfortunately, at six years old, I couldn’t understand what she meant. Even now, that hasn’t changed. In any case, as I grew older, I had no choice but to accept that I could not become an empress. Marrying a prince required someone truly exceptional—and I was not that person.
Our family, the Kallstadt family, was not as powerful as the two ducal houses and the grand ducal house that supported the empire. At best, we held the title of viscount, and we were provincial nobles who could hardly claim influence over the capital.
Even our territory was not particularly large or fertile. Located right beside the Gray Mountain Range, where monsters swarmed, it was a city more frequently visited by mercenaries and warriors than merchants. Since their economic activity was the primary source of income, the territory’s revenue was not particularly high compared to others. In fact, the patents and royalties my mother earned brought in more money.
And even my appearance was nothing extraordinary—certainly not enough to be called a breathtaking beauty.
How could a young lady from such a place become an empress? I was just an ordinary noble girl found anywhere. The only exceptional thing about our family was the abundance of money we had thanks to my mother’s inventions. I couldn’t even grasp how much it was when I was young, but my mother would always smile and say, “Even your father fell for my money.”
In any case, when I turned seven, I came to realize how absurd my mother’s words had been, and I stopped dreaming of becoming an empress. However, my mother, still believing I wished to become one, had me receive an extensive and advanced education from an early age. Thanks to that, my own aspirations drifted away from becoming an empress and shifted instead toward becoming a doctor to treat my father and an alchemist who created elixirs.
Thus began an education schedule so intense that it would have made an ordinary person collapse repeatedly. Yet, strangely enough, whenever I took the medicine my mother gave me, my fatigue would vanish instantly, and I would never forget anything I had read. People unanimously called me a genius… but I wasn’t so sure.
When I turned ten, my mother, who had been away for about three days, returned carrying a bundle. I wondered what she had made this time. She always brought something back whenever she went out, so I didn’t think too deeply about it.
But that day was different.
“Come, greet him.”
What emerged from the bundle was neither a machine to create new currency, nor a device to extend communication range, nor even long-distance teleportation magic known as a dream.
“…A boy?”
Ash-gray hair reminiscent of buckwheat flowers blooming across the Elsas hills, golden eyes revealed when my mother slightly lifted his eyelids, and a boy about my age.
“This child is…”
“Claudiel Tennes Adeboil.”
My mother had always told me as a child that I would grow up to become the empress of this country.
“He is the illegitimate child of the current emperor.”
It seemed that was not just a simple joke after all.
